Painting with Magnets

This was a project that Logan did a few weeks ago at the library with Mrs. D., and I am so in love with the cleverness of it! If you have followed my blog for any amount of time, you probably know that I love kids' painting projects, and we have done many, many, many of them, but this was completely new to me. I love that it mixes art and science, too!

Materials:

• round metal cake pan/pie plate
• white paper (card stock works well)
• pencil
• scissors
• magnet
• paper clips
• paint (tempera works well)

Directions:

1. If planning to make more than one of these, you will want to first make a round template for tracing. Place some paper inside your cake pan/pie tin and draw around the inside. Cut out this circle and use it for tracing all your other paper circles. Cut them out.
2. Place a paper circle inside of your cake pan or pie tin.
3. Add some paper clips (Mrs. D. had everyone use two large, plain, metal clips).
4. Next, pour in a little bit of paint. Mrs. D. let each child select two colors. Logan chose yellow and blue.
5. Give your child a magnet (preferably one that is not small enough to be swallowed! Ours were wand-style and were perfect for this.) and show him how to move it around on the bottom of the cake pan or pie tin. (You might need to help hold the pan, too.) This will move the paper clips around. Tell him to move the clips into the paint and then spread them all over the paper, using the magnet. (Help as needed, and make sure that magnets are nowhere near his mouth.) Talk about the process. What do you notice happens? Logan saw that the two colors mixed together to make green.
6. Once the painting is complete, allow it to dry before displaying.